Date
June 2025
Author
Kyle de Bruin
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Redefining the workplace:
Why employee experience matters
Since the pandemic shifted our collective consciousness around how most employees can work, Leesman has been feverishly analysing, questioning, and researching the workplace data we have been collecting from employees around the world.
In March 2020, the Leesman Office survey had been running just short of 10 years and had collected around 740k individual responses. That pivotal moment created a serious identity crisis for our business when almost every office we had ever measured, or were about to measure, was standing empty. While most organisations stood back and watched events unfold, paralysed in their decision-making, a handful of our forward-thinking clients decided to dive in headfirst and begin understanding this new reality.
The fruits of these clients’ labour paid off, by harnessing data never before captured through our Leesman Home and Hybrid tools. They were some of the first to engage in an open dialogue with their employees about how the relationship between an employee’s private home work setting, employer-provided places of work and everything else in between could be redefined to better suit both employee and employer.
Fast forward a few years, and we now have almost doubled the number of responses captured in our Leesman Office survey – meaning that we have over 530k post-pandemic office experience responses, as well as 540k home working experience responses. That equates to roughly 70 million post-pandemic data points from which our insights can now be derived.
There is no other independently sourced benchmark like this worldwide. We are committed to maintaining and using this valuable resource, which drives our efforts to measure the impact of hybrid work on employee experience globally.
It’s time to take stock of what we have learned.
What have we learned in the past few years?
Since 2020, Leesman has released a series of briefings, publications and research papers:
2024
The Value of Variety
2024
Power of Place
2023
The Workplace Reset
2023
How/Why Workplace
2023
A Decade of Change
2022
Making Hybrid Work
2022
Purposeful Presence
2021
The Home Stretch
This body of work provides an almost indigestible quantity of insights. However, for this article, we will summarise the key messages they provide:
1. The average home supports employees better than the average office
Early on in 2020 we discovered something that was hidden in plain sight for at least a decade before: environments designed for people to live in, were supporting knowledge workers better than environments designed for people to work in (Home working Insights Series). This initially sent shockwaves through the industry, as employees reported that, on average, 17 of the 21 activities we measured were better supported at home versus the average office. Cue the great realisation that being in the office five days per week was highly questionable for a considerable proportion of employees.
However, the focus for both employee and employer was still predominantly on the risks of the pandemic and for most, this shift in consciousness happened in the background and the longer we stayed away from the office, the more we adapted and customised our homes, so in turn further improving experience.
2. Employees perceptions and behaviours had changed (forever)
By the time lockdowns had disappeared entirely, the global average H-Lmi (the Leesman Home Working Index Score) had shifted from 73.8 to 78.7. By 2022, many employees had by now rearranged spare bedrooms, moved to larger homes away from city centres or converted garden sheds into cosy, highly efficient home offices – all with fantastic acoustic and visual privacy, highly customised and ergonomic workplace settings and with the convenience of being a few steps away from their living rooms, kitchens and possibly local amenities better suited to their lifestyle.
In this context, the commute became implicitly connected to any assessment of the quality of experience when ‘being in the office’. Employer-provided workplaces around the world were no longer competing with the office across the road, but rather with the generally better experience employees had at home (particularly when a commuter return trip was avoided). The commute was once seen as a cost of living, now as a cost of working.
3. Know your Workplace Why
As this new era dawned, the great online debate began. ‘Is the Office Dead?’ they all asked, hoping that someone would answer with a coherent response. As we muddled our way through that complex and oftentimes ridiculous debate, leaders of organisations were forced to reconsider the true purpose of the office accommodation in their real estate portfolios.
This was a period when CFOs around the world became predictably energised at the prospect of drastically reducing total accommodation expenses and related capital investments, while Heads of Real Estate scratched their real estate heads trying to decide what to do next. Some slashed their footprint early, some doubled down on experience, but most sat back and waited to see what their peers would do, the ever-increasing fear of a damning press headline looming in the background.
When HR implemented workplace policy, they often lacked decisiveness and coherence in their execution.
During this period, Leesman discovered that many organisations’ leaders did not actually know or agree on what their ‘workplace why’ was, yet they were making decisions and redesigning workplaces anyway. Only once you know your workplace purpose, can you truly deliver the function and form that serves it. To address this, Leesman provided a data-driven framework (The Workplace Reset) to help prioritise purposes and the fundamental aspects required to deliver.
4. Demographics matter, but personas matter more
As hybrid policies were being debated, half-heartedly implemented, adjusted, retracted or blatantly ignored, the age-old cliché rang true: One size does not fit all. Many organisations were taking the authoritarian or downright lazy routes in navigating the ‘days in workplace’ question by simply landing on a number of days per week, with two or three being the most popular.
But what was the data telling us?
Leesman has found that employees who are granted more freedom over where and how they do their work, consistently expressed that they were better supported in all 21 activities in the Leesman Index.
Employees’ profiles differed not so much by department but rather by what types of activities they needed to perform in the new array of locations they could choose to work from. Our most sophisticated clients started working with us to identify data-driven persona groups, unique to their organisation’s nuances. These then fuelled data-driven policies and workplace designs.
Decisions related to critical factors such as the reduction of corporate real estate (CRE) space or the requirement for employees to return to the office on a regular basis must be grounded in data that accurately represents the entirety of the employee population. Such decisions should not be made impulsively by a detached CEO, whose commuting expenses constitute merely a small portion of their overall remuneration package in comparison to the average employee affected by these decisions. Additionally, leaders should refrain from relying on nostalgic perspectives that equate past practices with effective management, or from assuming that presenteeism is synonymous with productivity.
5. Experience is everything
Fortunately, there were lights that appeared at the end of the various tunnels we were stuck in – employee experience, albeit for mostly the wrong reasons, shot up the agenda in boardrooms around the world. Organisations scrambled to improve the workplace experience to compete with the home experience. During this period, the average Lmi rose from 64.3 in 2020 to 67.7 in 2024. This means the average office we were measuring from 2022 to 2024 was just under ‘excellent’ level and employees’ voices were finally being listened to by leadership.
However, as mentioned earlier, the H-Lmi also increased by a similar margin during this period, leaving the Home/Office experience gap roughly the same and employees still judging their office experience (relatively) harshly.
At this time, more and more organisations started rolling out excellent (Lmi 70.0 or above) or outstanding (Lmi 80.0 or above) workplaces. And we started to understand the key aspects that were driving post-pandemic high performance.
64.3
Lmi, pre-pandemic
67.7
Lmi, post-pandemic
Drivers of Post-pandemic performance
From average to outstanding
When we had a closer look at the end of 2023 (Power of Place), four key aspects of experience emerged that differentiated average workplaces from high performance workplaces: pride and image, privacy and concentration, community and working together and sense of enjoyment.
Feeling proud, having a sense of community and enjoyment were all well and good and with hindsight, somewhat expected, but our research placed a spotlight on what we had long considered to be the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ – privacy and concentration.
For several years prior, we at Leesman have been on our soapbox imploring anyone who would listen about the importance of controlling noise levels and how a failure to control noise (unwanted sounds) was affecting many aspects of workplace performance.
As of today, our Leesman+ high performance offices average a paltry 45% satisfaction with noise levels and the global average is just 34%. That’s an alarming two thirds of employees globally that are dissatisfied with noise control measures in offices.
It’s worth noting here, that the organisations Leesman has the privilege to work with are those that care enough to invest in employee experience assessments and engage with their employees in a meaningful way. Therefore, the bias within our research may skew towards better results than many of the organisations who are not that way inclined. Which indicates that satisfaction with noise levels across all offices globally is dismally poor.
The enforced work from home experience of the pandemic provided many employees with the ‘luxury’ of working from the most acoustically private spaces they had ever worked from: their homes. More specifically, this meant:
a) Those with neurodiverse profiles finally had the peace and quiet that they so long required.
b) Those in highly collaborative roles were able to have their meetings and conversations with colleagues without being overheard or distracting those around them.
For these workers, noise and distractions can be intentional, controlled, and adjusted. Offices are now evaluated based on these factors. Our research and data confirm that, along with the cost, time, and inconvenience of commuting, the relationship between those creating noise, those experiencing it, and the spaces designed to accommodate it poses a significant challenge for the office environment.
This is the primary reason why the traditional office is facing an existential threat.
The value of variety
And this is where workplace success has been driven from in the recent years. The successful organisations we work with are delivering the appropriate level of variety to their employees to allow seamless access to work settings which accommodate the activities they need to perform. And as troublesome as this sounds, that demand fluctuates throughout the week and even the working day.
It’s as simple as that to know. But let’s face it, it’s not that simple to deliver.
Current workplace occupancy levels are driving the conversation for desk sharing to increase – ABW (Activity Based Working), along with its inferior cousin ‘hotdesking’, are a rapidly growing trend across the world. A phenomenon that existed long before the pandemic, especially in Australasia and parts of Europe, but is now being accelerated by the attractive prospect of smaller real estate portfolios (The Value of Variety).
Employees attendance habits are like shifting sands, difficult to predict, influenced by a complex mix of weather, traffic, industrial actions and/or the experience of the last time they visited their office. Therefore, planning the appropriate quantity of workstations throughout the week and into the next several years seems a near impossible task to many.
Many organisations are in the process of transitioning their office estate from fully assigned to unassigned, either by choice or by force, and we observed that the quality of the variety on offer was a key driver in the success of these projects. If you’re going to introduce a desk sharing policy within your workplaces, then this must be executed with a data driven strategy and a detailed understanding of your employees’ needs, or you risk fuelling the bad industry press related to hotdesking nightmares.
Implications of a dispersed workforce
We also observed interesting patterns in our data with regards to mobility. Employees have become more sedentary while in the office, reversing previous trends influenced by ABW. So, in essence they are doing more activities from fewer locations.
This could, in part, be explained by saying that employees are mimicking home working behaviours in the office – working from a single workstation all day by choice, but there are technological factors: people exchanging meeting room-located sessions with private desk-bound virtual meetings, or are invited to conversations over video calls that would previously be a quick chat in a breakout area. Likewise, virtual collaborations tend to give less allowance between meetings for employees to move to a different location or even to take mental breaks. As such, the benefit of being able to access your colleagues with a click of a button has transpired to have us stuck to a single seat for most of our working days.
Recruitment patterns have also shifted, with many organisations capitalising on talent further away from their offices, resulting in teams being more and more dispersed.
In summary, these trends are amplifying the number of variables workplace professionals need to contend with just to provide the right amount of quality space at the right price.
Looking ahead
Pay less attention to industry media
Companies like Amazon, Starbucks, Disney, and Apple are requiring their employees to return to the office, sometimes up to five days a week. They must have a good reason for this, right? Returning to the good old days might make it possible to simply assign each employee their own office, desk, or cubicle and move forward.
However, evidence suggests that organisations that are fully or predominantly remote are outperforming those with strict in-office mandates.
As noted earlier, Leesman found that employees who have more autonomy feel better supported in their roles. Therefore, it seems that offering full freedom of choice could be the more effective approach.
The inconvenient truth about workplace strategy and design is that the optimal solution will be different for every organisation and, in most cases, different for the various parts of each organisation. There is no silver bullet out there, no matter how many articles posted on LinkedIn and the like might suggest there is.
The emergent working world means that there are very real benefits to all parties in delivering great workplace experiences and an even higher cost to not doing so.
Organisations need to invest time and resources to deeply understand their employees’ needs and how their current workplace supports them.
In this environment, investing in non-organisation specific or ‘cookie-cutter’ design solutions, without first establishing an understanding of the end-users’ requirements, will result in inefficiencies and downtime introduced into employees’ daily lives (e.g. trying to simply find a space to make a video call or do some focused work). Not to mention, the frustrations employees experience because their basic needs are not being met, impacting their wellbeing and motivation.
Ultimately, the cost to the organisation may manifest itself as the significant cost associated with the need to replace an employee who leaves.
Redefine your workplace metrics
We must fundamentally rethink how we evaluate and communicate CRE portfolio performance within our organisations. The traditional industry metrics, particularly the fixation on occupancy rates on specific days like Mondays and Fridays, fail to capture the full picture of workplace utilisation and effectiveness. The inconsistent measurement of these occupancy percentages has diverted our attention from what truly matters: the quality of the workplace experience. Moreover, historical data reveals that real estate underutilisation was a significant challenge even before the pandemic – we simply weren’t addressing it effectively.
It’s time to develop more comprehensive and relevant performance indicators that reflect the modern workplace’s dynamic nature.
So what problem are we trying to solve: is it to maximise attendance at the office to justify the spend to CFOs? Or should we perhaps be thinking about what our workplaces are there to do and how well they deliver organisational objectives?
If the cost of your employees is 5 to 10 times the cost of the workplace you’re providing, does it really matter that you’ve filled the place up to a ‘satisfactory level’ if their experience has dropped off a cliff? If employees are required to be at the office five days a week and find the environment 20% less favourable than at home, will they seek out an employer who at least acknowledges this perception?
The reality is that each organisation needs to define their own CRE and workplace data strategies and involve HR and other business leaders in that process. In this context, the onus on business leaders is to actively participate in squeezing the value out of the workplaces being provided.
When it comes to data strategies, collecting data is no longer the challenge; it’s converting that data into actions. Know and agree the purpose of the workplace and start from there. Work from the employee outwards, not the other way around. The accumulative cost of your employees not being able to perform in your buildings will be many times greater than the cost of designing them to save costs.
Matching behaviours with design
Physical workplace enhancements alone cannot adequately address modern organisational requirements. The 2019 Leesman Index Experience with Excellence (EwX) Revolution research demonstrated that simply providing a new workplace did not guarantee success. Without carefully considering human behavioural dynamics and connecting those to a well-thought-out design strategy, a fundamental disconnect will continue to exist between the physical infrastructure (the “what”) and employee work patterns (the “how”).
The core challenge lies in creating a seamless alignment between workplace design and employee behaviours. This presents workplace strategists with a critical strategic decision: should organisations modify their spaces to support emerging work preferences by over-emphasising acoustically optimised environments for virtual collaboration? Or should they purposefully design spaces that encourage behavioural evolution through open, unassigned environments that facilitate serendipitous learning and collaboration?
As employee work patterns continue to shift and evolve, workplace design frameworks must evolve in parallel. The strategic challenge now lies in determining the optimal design approach for each distinct organisational unit. Success in this endeavour will increasingly depend on leveraging precise, contextual data to inform these critical decisions. This data-driven approach ensures that workplace design choices align with both current behavioural patterns and desired organisational outcomes.
Read the full article originally published on Work&Place.
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